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When I got hired by an independent contractor to track social media during Hawaii 2010 primary and main elections, one of the things I noticed was the amount of content that was spun out there. From opening campaign fan pages on Facebook to Youtube and twitter profiles, it was a rush to get on the social media starting line but without any kind of exit strategy. DANGEROUS!

If any career politician in Hawaii rushed to get their game on in social media just to get the spin and they don’t tend to the profiles and content that’s posted, this will definitely have a track-able impact on future running’s of that politician. Think about it; with all the content that the politicians spun out there on social media can be used against them in the future when the changing their platforms or opinions. If this falls into the hands of their opponents, it WILL be used against them.

So in short, if you have either won or lost as a politician in the recent Hawaii 2010 campaign and you used social media, it would be best of you “scrub” or delete your profiles of title and content. Surly, if they decide they want to run again, they don’t want people getting served old content. It would probably be perceived that the politician isn’t current = fail!

Well, I guess that’s what it’s all about in politics – fluffing numbers right? Well, just like when I hear that a union is getting behind a candidate that it automatically includes all of the union members, the same goes for Social Media and follower or “likes”. I know of many people who are part of unions where candidates have been endorsed by union leaders that wouldn’t vote for that candidate if their life depended on it. But for Social Media numbers, the spin is much more transparent….

I track all kinds of Social Media motion in the current Hawaii political race and it’s a great source of humor for me. Not so much that the Social Media managers aren’t doing their jobs, it’s just that next to nobody (fans or followers) are responding. How do I get to this conclusion? I’ll show you.

I used to a keyword tracker for Twitter and typed in Duke Aiona, Mufi Hannemann and Neil Abercrombie and other variable hash-tagged keywords and watch it load up. A very small social media conversation but dominated by Abercrombies team. But after days of reviewing, my conclusion is that there are only a handful of people tweeting or re-tweeting political matters that are in most cases, members of the candidates SM (social media) team.

Then go to the candidates twitter account. Yea sure, Mufi has into 620,000 followers, but that doesn’t mean crap. One day I bumped into Mufi and his press guy Bill. The told me how many follower they had and I smiled and said “So”. They both looked at me in dismay until I said, “Have you tested them”? I got a blank stare *_*

Then go to the candidates web page and look at the internal blogging – almost every post has NO comments. That doesn’t mean that they’re not getting read, but it shows that it’s not worth commenting on. Also, one of the downfalls of showing share widgets (how man re-tweets or Facebook shares), it shows how little the blog is getting pushed. I would just do without that widget – if there not pumping them out, it looks bad……for the numbers.

Then go to the candidates Facebook pages. Look to see how man fans they have then look to see reaction to posts. Once again, mind numbing. Just because some of the candidates have upwards to 6000 fans, they’re engagement factor is as poor as it gets. It is showing me that the massing of fans is that of MySpace back in 2003 – Empty.

But I just don’t spew junk talk without a solution to prove the numbers. IF you want to test the engagement power of Facebook or Twitter, build a specific landing page within the candidate website and tweet or share a call-to-action (donate, latest news, even a funny video) and after 24 hours, run analytics and track the redirect traffic. You WILL get your real numbers.

Just like when candidates say how much money they have in the coffers for their campaign, go to a site like Neil Abercrombie and look at his donation widget. It says that since the widget has been placed that there is (to date of 8/4) $810 but he’s tweeting out that he’s go over $700k in total. Pretty sad numbers for online campaigning. Live by the numbers, die by the numbers…..